NASA is working on a warp drive, for real

[cmyk]

From post #15 in the above linked thread on this project:

@davidm

Thanks Spacial Rift 47. I was hoping that someone like you would respond.

I guess what confused me is that, given my limited understanding, it seems to be saying that he believes it can be done with a positive energy density.

One of the diagrams (on page 31 of the PDF, but labeled as page 21 on the document) states:

[ul]
[li]The figure depicts a modified Michelson-Morley Interferometer setup that makes use of a 1 cm diameter toroidal-ring of positive energy density on one leg of the interferometer.[/li][li]a He-Ne laser beam(λ = 633 nm) is split allowing one part of the beam to pass through the center of the ring and hence the spherical warp field region.[/li][li]This warp field region will induce a relative phase shift between the split beams that could be detectable provided the magnitude of the phase shift is sufficient.[/li][/ul]

It seems to assume that the effect will be produced with a toroidal-ring of positive energy. Is he simply wrong about this? Does the paper give his reasons for believing this? Am I just completely misunderstanding the whole thing (a real possibility)?

So, White’s plan is to build some toroidal interferometer using strictly positive energy to create a “warp field.” Then Lumpy suggests that the experiment is to see if they can detect a volume of negative energy, and the thread ends.

Can any physicists weigh in on this one? PDF Link.